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Thu 08 Oct 09

Cognologs are go!

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Your free daily drip-feed of thought provocation is now available.

New readers start here

A Cognolog is five small suggestive paragraphs drip-fed one per day. The purpose is to encourage imaginative and critical thinking and also to provide topics for conversation and exploration.
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Mon 21 Sep 09

Measuring issues

We need some way to assess:

  • how well a person meets our expectations,
  • how well some course works,
  • and gauge how a particular ‘score’ matches with our real world experience.

If the 12Rs are to be taught then there needs to be some measure for how well people are progressing and when they ‘make the grade’. Any tests need to be fair because their ability to get a job and further education may depend on them.
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Sun 06 Sep 09

12 Rs and old age

This note asks “If the 12Rs are life skills then how do they particularly apply to later life?” For example we know that memory ie. [lit:remembering] deteriorates and can become so bad as to make everyday life extremely difficult. Is it going to be useful to be able to rattle through a ticklist of the Rs when thinking about the social support that Mrs Brown might need?
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This article is especially for those involved with higher education entrance standards.
Question: How are the 12Rs are useful in the pre-, post- and during assessment of college students?

Answer: As important indicators of suitability, maturity and engagement respectively.
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Surely it’s impossible to give somebody a meaningful single grade A to E for their standard of essential basic education. Actually I have invented such a scheme which is extremely straightforward and based on practical reasoning.

New readers start here: The 12Rs define essential basic education. More is available here

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Sun 23 Aug 09

Introducing Cognologs

Thought-provoking articles in five parts

1
“Sometime in the next month I’ll be starting a daily cognolog”.

“What is that?” I hear you ask.

“I’ll explain” I reply.

“Oh get on with it!” you say.

“OK Are you sitting comfortably?”

That was a conversation – of sorts. However even though it was supposed to be you, the reader, alternating with me, the writer, of course I did all the ‘talking’. So you’re completely passive. That’s the nature of the reader/writer relationship.
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Problem Accented characters are a pain to type even with a dedicated keyboard. You can remember numeric codes! Or you can peck at a list somewhere and paste in.

Solution I have written a small program that allows you to use a single function key for all accents in any language of your choice. It will also do special characters.

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